Burger Q&A With RUB BBQ Pit Master, Scott Smith

Burgers, burgers, burgers. Burgers topped with butter, stuffed with cheese, sandwiched with chicken, spread with peanut butter, and topped with fried egg. The Monday night burger special cooked up by pit master Scott Smitth at RUB BBQ has been a big success. This Monday's burger eschewed a regional style for the burger that Scott wanted to make just so he could eat it. What was it? Read on.

What's the special burger for tonight [Monday]?
A Bacon and Roaring Forties Blue Cheese Burger served with a horseradish aioli. This one's for me.

RUB's Bacon and Roaring Forties Blue Cheese Burger.

What's so special about this burger?

Well, make the bacon, so I'm pretty excited about that, and I love Roaring Forties Blue Cheese. I've been wanting to do this one for a while.

So are you kind of out of regional styles to do? What are you going to do now?
Well, we'll repeat them, there were people who didn't get to try them all the first time. And we'll come up with some other ones. I like this because it's a playful thing I get to do. It's not the same BBQ that we do every day. Obviously, we're not doing it super seriously. I mean, when we do it we do it well, but it's kind of also just meant to be to do something different, to generate business on Mondays, which is a slow night.

So has it affected business?
It has. It's been fantastic. It's really exciting. We've tossed around the idea of doing a restaurant that's more burger-oriented in the past, so we'll see what happens.

Pit Master Scott Smith.

Which of the regional burgers that you have done is your favorite?
I really liked the Jersey slider that we did last week. It's a great combination of flavors and textures. There's great oniony flavor. It's kind of like White Manna, but with more salt [laughs]. It's the only thing I think that they're really missing there.

Any others?
The Nut Burger was interesting. It had chopped peanuts and Miracle Whip, and I roasted the nuts myself. It's funny, I hate Miracle Whip. When I was growing up, my dad put it on everything. But when you try it with everything, and you have that super fresh peanut flavor combined with the tangy, sweet Miracle Whip, and the burger, it was like, "Now I get it!" I like the West Coast Burger too. It was basically an In-N Out Burger, but we changed the name so we wouldn't get sued. That was pretty tasty. I don't know. It's tough to decide between them. They're like your children. I like them all.

Which one was the most popular?
The most popular was the onion burger. It's an interesting concept. The onions are almost burned, but not quite. The combination of flavors and textures is really nice. Not a lot of people are going to be able to go to Oklahoma anytime soon to try the original, so this gives them a chance to.

The RUB Burger.

So how was the burger? Really good. The blue was strong. It was a deep, raunchy funk that Smith said came from a Gorgonzola strain of bacteria used to make the cheese. It was mellowed by the saltiness of the thick cuts of housemade bacon.

A funny thing happened though. With all this talk about the special burgers at RUB, the actual RUB Burger (Mondays only, $7.50) should not be overlooked. It's a pretty damn tasty burger— smooth and savory. There's a moist flattened patty topped with Velveeta, chipotle aioli, chopped caramelized onions, and pickles.